Melting glaciers could raise sea levels more than previously thought because of the way polar ice meets the ocean floor.
A new satellite-mediated study of the Petermann Glacier in Greenland shows what is known as its “land line”, where the ice from a glacier in contact with the sea floor turns into a shelf floating above it due to tidal cycles, according to Bloomberg News, yesterday.
This allows warmer water to make its way to the glacier from below, according to scientists from the University of California, Irvine, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and other institutions.
From 2016 to 2022, the landline of the Petermann Glacier retreated about 2.5 miles, allowing warmer waters to carve a 670-foot cavity below it, according to the study, which was published this week in the Journal of the National Academy. of Science”, an interdisciplinary scientific journal.
Two major climate reports published on April 20 showed that ice is melting at an unprecedented level around the world, from the Alps to Antarctica.
And the European Union’s climate monitoring agency announced that more ice melted in the European Alps last year than at any time previously recorded.
The Copernicus Climate Change Service said the glaciers had lost more than five cubic kilometers of ice.
The agency added that if this block of ice was compressed into a cube, its edges would be about five and a half times the height of the Eiffel Tower.
